The Cincinnati Ballet
celebrated its 40th anniversary in October with a tribute to the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo, the company that brought a first glimpse of ballet
to nearly 100 cities and towns in North America in 1938 and continued
to enchant its new audiences until its demise in 1962. World War II
deprived the Ballet Russe of its headquarters in Monte Carlo, and as
the itinerant troupe criss-crossed the nation, it vastly influenced
the development of ballet education and of regional companies in many
of the cities it visited. As its personnel retired, to be replaced by
new dancers trained in America, many settled in cities such as Houston,
Tulsa, Los Angeles and Seattle where they offered new American ballet
trainees continuity with their Russian origins.

The Liverpool-born
Frederic Franklin, a charter member of the Monte Carlo troupe and now
88 years old, has had an association with the Cincinnati Ballet since
1974, staging for them the major ballet classics and serving for a time
as Artistic Director. He returned this year to restore George Balanchine's
1946 ballet, Night Shadow and to recreate excerpts from earlier
works in the Ballet Russe 1938-1939 repertory: Frederick Ashton's Devil's
Holiday and Leonide Massine's Gaîté Parisienne and Seventh
Symphony.

In addition to the
ballet program, visitors to Cincinnati were treated to a splendid display
of Ballet Russe memorabilia  books, playbills, press reports and
local photographs  at the Cincinnati Public Library. At the Cincinnati
Art Museum a magnificent exhibit of designs for Ballet Russe costumes
and sets documented the artistic significance of the ballet, with examples
of décors from 19 works designed by such painters as Salvador
Dali, Pavel Tchelichev, Natalia Gontcharova, Christian Berard, and Eugene
Berman. The Cincinnati-based Julius Fleischmann, a devout sponsor and
mentor of the Ballet Russe company, had acquired the vast collection
now housed permanently in the Museum.

Two new ballets
by choreographers from the San Francisco Ballet opened the program at
the Aronoff Center for the Arts on October 18. Julia Adam offered an
ensemble piece called Reverance to snippets from the music of
Erik Satie. Ten dancers at a ballet barre exercise in jerky, angular
doll-like movements, each assertng a statement of individuality. Val
Caniparoli created a glitzy, Las Vegas style pas de deux called No
Other for the formidable Cuban ballerina, Lorna Feijóo and
the Vaganova-trained Dmitri Trubchanov.

Franklin returned
to the original 1946 production of Balanchine's Night Shadow,
a ballet currently known as La Sonnambula in the repertories
of companies all over the world. The fetid, almost surreal atmosphere
of the first version, with its bizarre décor by Dorothea Tanning, has
been replaced by a more piquant stage picture, with a borrowed set by
James Morgan and florid costumes designed by Barbara Karinska for a
production at the Kennedy Center.

The familiar narrative
is intact: a poet intrudes at a ball, is attracted to the host's mistress,
and is drawn into the milieu of the host's sleepwalking wife. When the
mistress intercepts the couple, she warns the host of the tryst. He
stabs the poet, who is carried off to the tower by the sleepwalker.
In between the dramatic sequences are three remarkable ensemble dances
for eight couples, guests at the ball, and a series of divertissements
performed for the gathering: a pastoral pas de quatre, a Moorish pas
de deux, a solo by a rubbery Harlequin, and a dance with hoops for four
women. Franklin has called upon subsequent versions of the ballet for
the Harlequin solo (originally danced by a woman) and has bypassed the
more politically correct pas de deux by setting the Moorish duet on
a black male dancer and his Japanese partner.

The Cincinnati dancers
captured the style of the piece with the appropriate dark passions.
Kristi Capps as the Sleepwalker and Trubchanov as the captivated poet
performed the tense, tactile duet with sensitivity to all its nuances.
Tricia Sundbeck as the vengeful Coquette and Valentine Liberatore as
the baron hosting the party were convincingly arrogant and manipulative.

Frederick Ashton
set Devil's Holiday on the Ballet Russe in the summer of 1939
while the company performed in London. The outbreak of World War II
prevented them from showing it in Great Britain and so it had its world
premiere in New York on October 26, danced by an exhausted cast arriving
from a harrowing Atlantic crossing. Set to a score by Vincenzo Tommasini
on themes of Paganini and performed in dazzling décors by Eugene Berman,
it tells of a capricious visit to Venice by the Devil, who diverts the
progress of a wedding by turning a beggar into a nobleman determined
to woo the bride. Franklin danced the beggar, partnering Alexandra Danilova.
Film fragments of the ballet shot from backstage at the Lyric Theatre
in Chicago by Ann Barzel helped Franklin's extraordinary muscle memory
in recreating a poignant pas de deux of great tenderness and a challenging
solo depicting the rejection of the beggar. Cincinnati's Sundbeck and
Truchanov interpreted Ashton's lovely duet with insight, and Andrey
Kasatsky conveyed the angst depicted in the difficult male solo.

In a film clip
projected on a scrim, Franklin told of the critical reaction to Leonide
Massine's Gaîté Parisienne in three cities. Paris
found it inappropriate for a classical ballet troupe, while London deemed
it vulgar. "But over here," Franklin declared, "They
ate it up." It became the most popular offering of the troupe,
surviving the 24 years of the national tours. Franklin has restored
the glorious pas de deux he performed as the Baron with Danilova as
the Glove Seller for Cincinnati dancers Stephanie Roig and Zack Grubbs,
both receptive to Franklin's contagious respect for the work's romantic
style.

The scherzo movement
of Massine's Seventh Symphony closed the program. Franklin had
not danced in this segment of the ballet but had become familiar with
it during performances on tours. In recent years he served as a guide
to the matching of Massine's choreography from an early 16 mm film to
a musical soundtrack, a project undertaken at the University of Rochester
with the film archivist, John Mueller. Depicting the Gods cavorting
in the airy reaches of Mount Olympus, dancers Mishic Marie Corn and
Anthony Krutzkamp assumed roles originally taken by Igor Youskevitch
and Alicia Markova, with an ensemble of 12 performing the buoyant figures
and exquisite tableaux that had established Massine as a genius in his
times.

In capturing the
essence of one of the most creative periods in ballet history, the bright
dancers of the Cincinnati Ballet proved that the vitality of the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo continues to enchant audiences today and that the
excellence of these early works has made them timeless.